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The New Steps Research

 

I have started doing a little digging into the history of The New Steps which are located in Old Town, Edinburgh. So far the search has been quite disappointing, as I can’t seem to find any relevant information online, the most I have gotten is a tourism blog talking about them as one more spot to visit during their travels to the city.

So I decided to start looking elsewhere, in this case, the National Library of Scotland. My first step was to start looking at old city maps to try and find the exact spot the stairs are, and the library website has a really handy tool of begin able to look at maps side to side. With this, I was able to locate the stairs on several maps going from 1892 forward, as older maps have the general streets, but the stairs are not shown anywhere.

In one of the older maps that I found from 1892-1905, there is displayed a staircase similar to what The New Staris are today, with just part of them not matching the actual route, so it could be said they have been there, but slightly altered through the years. I can say they are The New Steps, as the entry point both on the top and the bottom are the same, it’s just the path they take is slightly different.

In the screenshot below we can see how the stairs are represented in the map of Edinburgh.

Map Name: OS 25 Inch, 1892-1905

Map Name: OS 1:1, 250/1:2,500, 1944-1971

I did however find a comment in a tourism blog about them, but at the moment I don’t have any references to confirm if this information is viable.
The New Steps were built in 1869 when St. Guiles Street was laid out in the present form. And they were called The New Steps because The Evening News had an office in the building to the left of number 19. You would walk through a vennel, an open-air passageway, where number 19 now stands, and climb three sections with eight flights of stairs to St. Guiles Street. In 1928, hence the date of the building The Evening News building was extended and took over the area the steps started in. The steps were realigned and if you move Google Maps with one right click you can see the present start of the steps with the light above the entrance.  I don’t have any way to reference this information, nor do I know if it’s true, yet.
Looking at the dates of the maps, and the dates the Evening News building was extended, it makes sense the change in the path found in the maps.

I’m looking to find some reliable sources to confirm the history of the steps, for this, I have asked for help from one of the librarians, and they kindly told me they were gonna do some digging and come back to me with any information relevant.

The Library reached out to me after a weekend and confirmed my suspicions about the history of the steps. The librarian did some research in different books, but same as me there was not much information about the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re reading this in order, please proceed to the next post: ‘Meeting’.

Daniela M

The New Steps Research / dmsp-place23 by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0
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